


This is Not About Loss

by annegirlblythe



Series: A Coda for Violet [3]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Angst, But they can find some peace, Dentistry, Gen, Poetry, Sunny doesn't, The Bauldelaire kids will never be fully okay, Violet sees everything as signficant, it causes some issues, the tooth fairy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 04:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11372415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annegirlblythe/pseuds/annegirlblythe
Summary: Violet compares and contrasts her own ways with dealing with their experiences with those of her sister, and ultimately gives Sunny agency over her own emotional welfare.Warning for the bizarre use of teeth as a metaphor.





	This is Not About Loss

i remember being six years old and holding an ivory that might as well have been a piano key for all i cared that it was free - it was the longest day of first grade - we could not wait to be home to set up our plan.

 i knew where she lived - though i could not have pointed it out on any map - she did not have a physical location, but there was somewhere a tiny palace. and she had all of my mother’s tools - all the benches and saws and drills and glue and she was creating something blueprinted and mint-flavored _wonderful -_

 see, i only wanted to see if i could catch her - i did not want to hurt her, would have given my entire lower jaw to help her - i had a box beneath my bed of pulleys and wires and gears and a lure beneath my pillow and we were _ready -_

 in retrospect we should not have used the top of the dollhouse - should not have taken the roof from over the heads of my three resourceful dolls in pursuit of riches untold and an inelegant grasp around a tiny waist - we didn’t know it would make a tiny schism in our home like the crack that set so many fires ablaze not elsewhere

 sometimes i think that since that day she belongs only to you - unborn when i reached for her all those years ago - today i am her. not for you, nothing so foolish for you but the legend lives in cycles and in volunteers - she still has no locality, no real magic, no tiny workshop and no project somewhere between my interest and yours.

  _you little thing._

 you are six years old, standing in the middle of the lab i modeled after our antanaclasistic keeper - there is something clenched into your first - i cannot see what you’re holding but your face is more red than i’ve seen since our days spent unhesitating and lost,

 you have pulled out of place the only thing you depended upon, like forensics and burn records after so many fires, and when i put it together, sliding a small-scale mystery - i think of the jar i’m going to need to keep, now, between pages and acronyms and ribbons without daisies and found china and wire-rimmed readers that fit a boy but not a man - this is not about loss _this is not about loss_ this is not about loss.

 you are twelve years old, and we’re standing in an office modeled after nothing beautiful - and clear plastic sheets of xrays might mean more to you than they do to the man with the surgical mask and the detached tone, he tells you it’s your choice and i want to add _damn right it’s her choice_ but i remember he means medically and i am not that kind of doctor so i keep my mouth shut while you consider yours.

 in our years on land i have taught you enough to choose history over beauty, so when he says the word _cosmetic_ you will know what it means and tell him that wire is better used elsewhere - you spent too long in disguises to want to change yourself - _this is not about loss._

 you are twenty four years old and standing on a stage like the one where i was _right_ having _left_ my hand against the cage - but today, you are holding your first degree and joining us in _doctor._ there is a set of silver instruments awaiting you in our anatomical library and i think that she i never caught has preserved them just for you. somehow, you have made yourself okay, and finally, this is really _not_ about loss.

 


End file.
